Court orders government to reveal David Walliams’ film awards pay

The judgment confirms earlier decisions by the Information and Data Protection Commissioner and the Data Protection Tribunal.

Industry insiders estimated the elaborate event, budgeted at €400,000, cost well over €1.3 million – including massive advertising on billboards and online.

In August 2022, the film commission claimed it was “not in a position” to identify how much taxpayers’ money it had spent on the Malta Film Awards.

A Freedom of Information request filed by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation on the payments made to Walliams was denied by the Malta Film Commission.

Subsequently, the foundation reported the matter to the Information and Data Protection Commissioner (IDPC), who ruled in its favour.

The IDPC did not agree with the film commission’s argument that the requested documents were subject to professional privilege and that their disclosure would amount to breach of confidence.

An attempt by the film commission to appeal the decision before the Data Protection Tribunal proved unsuccessful, as the tribunal upheld the IDPC ruling.

The film commission then took the matter to a civil court, asking for the annulment and revocation of the IDPC’s decision.

In a judgment handed down by Judge Lawrence Mintoff on Wednesday, the court rejected the film commission’s second appeal.

The court ordered the commission to release the information, noting that the authority is duty-bound to reveal and explain how public funds are being spent.

It said that certain legal exceptions from publication do not apply if the authority would have bound itself to confidentiality.

“The information being requested is related to payments to a person which it chose directly, without a public call”, the judge noted.